Former defence minister Lord Gilbert slammed the airbus A400m aircraft as an "absolute wanking disaster" in the House of Lords on Wednesday in one of the fruitiest displays of unparliamentary language the Lords has seen this year.

The Labour peer launched a stinging attack on the defence report, his ire first sparked by the "egregious" spelling mistakes and "disgraceful" grammatical solecisms found "before page 10"

"I do not normally care to read reports," he told the House, "but I intended to read this one from cover to cover. However, I gave up on page 10, actually only the fifth printed page of the report, where there is a misplaced apostrophe. "

His Lordship the moved on to abuse the substance of the report, with vehemence that reached a crescendo when confronted with the expert advice of Pierre Vimont, Secretary-General of the European External Action Service and former French ambassador to the US.

"They found some idiot called Pierre Vimont-what a lunatic. This is what he is summarised as saying:

"Despite the limited success of the A400M".

Lord Gilbert carries on to say he believed Vimont had underestimated the failure of the A400M:

"The A440M is a complete, absolute wanking disaster, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. I have never seen such a waste of public funds in the defence field since I have been involved in it these past 40 years."

The use of profanity is considered unparliamentary language, a procedure set up to ensure members of the house behave in a way suitable for legislators.

This includes, but is not limited to the suggestion of dishonesty or the use of profanity. This is not the first time a member has been caught using unseemly language. Prime Minister David Cameron was rebuked for unparliamentary language after calling shadow chancellor Ed Balls a "muttering idiot" and Minister for Transport Simon Burns called John Bercow a "stupid sanctimonious dwarf".